From a fan who shows off Daleks from across the decades to Lin's Thai Cafe in Southsea who have built a Tardis themed toilet inside the cafe. We celebrate 60 years of Doctor Who.
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00:00 Hello and welcome to this special feature celebrating six decades of everybody's favourite
00:05 time lord, Doctor Who. We'll be meeting a very enthusiastic fan of the TV show who has
00:11 collected daylights from different eras. We'll also be chatting with Sunderland Man and Doctor
00:16 Who animator Rob Ritchie. Then we're in South Sea at Lin's Thai Café which is home to a
00:22 TARDIS themed toilet. And lastly we're off to Wigan to meet a fan celebrating Doctor
00:28 Who's 16th anniversary. So sit back, strap in and enjoy.
00:33 I'm Phil Stevens, I'm a Doctor Who and science fiction collector. Most of my collection is
00:41 a mixture of Doctor Who and Lake Severn. So I've been collecting a long, long time. First
01:06 I remember Doctor Who from when I was about three which would be 1972, 71, 72. I remember
01:14 the Sea Devil was being on the TV. So I started at a pretty early age. I started small and
01:22 it's just got, everything's just got bigger and bigger over the years. But I mean the
01:28 bigger bits are probably a bit more recent. I had a Dalek at my mum's place many years
01:35 ago. I was repairing it for a friend and it was in my bedroom and I had to sort of sidle
01:41 around the walls to get from the bed to the door, the door to the bed. So luckily it was
01:44 only there for a couple of weeks when I was working on it. But yes, it, they are quite
01:50 good at filling up available floor space.
01:56 A resident of Sunderland has played a key role in bringing some of the Doctor's long
02:00 lost adventures back to life, all from his wayside home. We'll let him explain that one.
02:05 There's a lot of programmes that have missing episodes. Mainly from the 50s, 60s, some 70s
02:15 I think. Doctor Who is a programme that's been really, really fortunate in the way that
02:19 every episode exists as an audio recording. And that wasn't down to the BBC, that was
02:26 purely down to fans of the show at the time. And you would have basically fans who did
02:31 want to relive the episode and that would be through either holding a microphone up
02:38 to a television and just recording the episode as it went out live. On those instances though
02:43 you would always hear family members in the background, dogs barking. But you would have
02:48 some fans who were really clever and would take apart a TV set and hard wire cables from
02:55 it, from an audio recorder into the speaker output of the TV. So we've got these fantastic
03:00 audio recordings of a programme that sadly the visuals don't exist but the soundtrack
03:05 does. So I helped with about seven animations for the BBC on reconstructing missing Doctor
03:13 Who. Obviously I've been a big Gaelic fan as you can guess. But that's how I ended up
03:20 getting the job on the animation range just from doing animated Gaelic tests and putting
03:26 them on YouTube. A producer at the time saw them and said "well we like this style, can
03:31 you do it for an actual BBC production?" Rob also worked on the similar reconstruction
03:38 of a missing episode of another classic British show, Dad's Army. Doctor Who and Dad's Army
03:43 are a bit fortunate in that there's not many other TV shows that get this much love and
03:48 attention and I mean you certainly don't see old programmes like Zed Cars getting an animation
03:54 reconstruction or anything like that. So yeah, Doctor Who's got the fan base and the fans
03:59 who do want to see these missing stories brought to life. So my Dalek, I started building during
04:09 lockdown, just did little bits. And I always wanted that specific style of Dalek because
04:16 I've always loved the style of the original 60s Daleks and why I went for that one with
04:23 mine is a bit more sentimental. I've really enjoyed working on the two missing Patrick
04:29 Troughton Dalek stories. So I basically built that Dalek to the specification of the ones
04:34 from those animations. You know what, I always get asked how I would feel if an original
04:41 episode turned up after we've done one. But I would be absolutely okay with that and you
04:49 know what, I would be fascinated to kind of put the two side by side and see how close
04:53 we were with some things or how miles off we might have been with other things. And
04:58 obviously people could still watch both but it would be really important if the originals
05:04 did ever show up again. If an original episode turned up and I would be going through one
05:11 watching both side by sides and seeing if we were better for anything or... I do think
05:18 that there's one story in particular which was called the Macro Terror which was about
05:22 giant alien crabs. And I could tell you now that we did the crabs better than how they
05:28 did them in the 60s. But it would still be amazing to see an original episode recovered.
05:34 I can remember watching it as a kid when it was the Daleks. I'm showing my age now.
05:48 And it used to be on a Sunday tea time. And I've got to say they terrified me. Absolutely
05:54 terrified me. I think it's the fantasy of it isn't it? You know, there's all this beaming
06:00 up business and you know, it's just the fantasy of it isn't it? Everybody's got some fantasy
06:05 haven't they? And over the years who's been your favourite Doctor? Which actor? I can't
06:11 think of his name. Someone who used to wear this big scar. Oh, Tom Baker? Tom Baker, yes.
06:16 People have got that many problems in their lives today. It's just, go put the telly on,
06:21 watch Doctor Who, it's a fantasy. Maybe because it's, you know, make believe and it's not
06:26 real. I don't know. I don't know. I don't actually, I've never actually watched an episode.
06:33 I watched it here and there. I was probably a little scared as a little boy. But, fantastic
06:37 that it's 60. Who was your Doctor then? Who was my Doctor? It would have been Tom Baker.
06:43 So you're giving away your age there? To an extent. Why do you think it's been successful
06:47 for so long? I just think people love just that, just getting away from reality. Just
06:53 a little bit of escapism really. Did you have a favourite Doctor over the years at
06:57 all? Yeah, what was his name? He played, um, he played Wurzel Gummidge. John Pertwee. John
07:04 Pertwee. Yeah, he was. And he was the Dalek time. I loved him with his long scarf and
07:08 his hat and his curly hair. But that was Tom Baker. Oh, Tom Baker! Oh, there you go. Yeah,
07:12 him. He didn't play Wurzel Gummidge, did he? Watched it as a child. He'd be on the cushion
07:17 when the Dalek came on. But it's not something that I've continued watching. Why do you think
07:21 it's continued for 60 years? Because there's a lot of mad sci-fi fans out there. Did you
07:30 have a favourite Doctor? Oh yes, Neil Tennant. Is it Neil Tennant? Whatever that is. David
07:36 Tennant. That's it, David Tennant, yeah. I'm here outside Lynn's Thai Cafe on Elm Grove
07:45 in Southsea, which has got a surprise in store. Okay, so let's see what's behind the door.
08:10 Let's see if it's bigger on the inside. You don't see that every day.
08:39 Hi, my name is Snow Kate. And what did you think when the child was first arrived here?
08:46 Oh, I don't know it's going to look like this. And I don't know Doctor Who before, so yeah,
08:53 either with my mum, she doesn't know. And what do you think of it now? I think it's
08:59 quite unique and it's a proof, yeah. And did it get much of a reaction from your customers?
09:07 Yeah, first when it's here, everyone keeps asking me, "What is this? What is this?"
09:13 And they're asking me, "Is it bigger inside?" And I don't know the joke and that's it for
09:20 me. So Doctor Who isn't really big in Thailand? No, I never know about Doctor Who before.
09:27 But maybe I know who would do that. Hi, I'm Brian Muttocks. I've been a Doctor
09:44 Who fan since I was nine years old. I've been collecting since I was nine years old. And
09:49 this is my Doctor Who room. And I have got videos, DVDs, Blu-rays, posters, comics, magazines,
09:57 figures, everything you can imagine. And this is where it all happens. I got into Doctor
10:04 Who probably when I was about five or six, but I found it a little bit too frightening.
10:09 I used to have to sit on my dad's knee when I was six. But those memories stuck with me.
10:14 And then when I was a child, and possibly because I was a very, very bullied child,
10:20 this was my escape to somewhere else where I could go through time and space and love
10:27 all the adventures and the monsters. And it let your imagination go wild when you were
10:33 a child. And it gave you that permission to have that sort of imagination. And you could
10:38 write your own stories and have your own adventures. And that just became a brilliant escapism.
10:44 And I still possibly use a little bit like that today. This is a Doctor Who VHS from
10:52 1983, which my parents bought me for 40 quid, which was an awful lot of money in 1983. And
10:59 this is the very first ever home video release that the BBC ever did. So apparently this
11:06 is even worth quite a lot of money now. Blimey, when I was a child back in the 70s, these
11:12 were some of my favourite toys that I ever had. And I couldn't wait to play with them.
11:18 And in fact, I probably got through about four of these before I started collecting
11:23 because it was so worn out. But I've managed to get all of these in near mint condition
11:28 since I was a child and I loved these. This is a 1965 Dalet board game. And I believe
11:36 it's the very first ever Doctor Who board game. There's been quite a few over the years.
11:41 But this is a very, very rare Dalet board game. And it took me quite a while to find
11:47 this. But I believe this is probably worth around 200, 300 quid, possibly more on eBay.
11:54 [Music]